Mike Spinelli

Car Design News readers have voted Aston Martin's V8 Vantage (pictured) and DB9 first and third places in a poll of favorite car designs. Aston Martins overall scored higher than any other brand — including BMW, Porsche, Mercedes and Lamborghini — in the poll, which took the opinions of 1,000 design professionals and students. The honor goes both to designer Dilip Chhabria and to the engineers who created the cars' flexible VH platform, which underpins all current Astons, as well as to parent Ford for both ponying up needed cash and then knowing when to keep the hell out of the way. Mazel tov.